FROM THE VAULT: It’s John DeBella’s Morning, Philadelphia Just Wakes Up In It Every Day

EDITOR’S NOTE: Wrote this 14 years ago (14? Good Lord!), reprinting this today in the wake of today’s news that DeBella is being sued for sexual harrassment by his long-time on-air sidekick. The title of the profile was JOHN DEBELLA IS NOT AN ASSHOLE. ANYMORE — in retrospect, that assessment was premature. BY JONATHAN VALANIA John DeBella has been a hippie and a punk. A winner and a loser. A hero and a villain. And now he just wants to be a nice guy. As if to prove it, he is going to start welling up in T-minus-three seconds. “I […]

IN MEMORIAM: Mark E. Smith Of The Fall

  BY BRIAN W. MURRAY By the time I came to The Fall they were already well established as (post-) punk iconoclasts, their unique brand of contrarian, literate sonic terrorism already highly regarded by musos-in-the-know, of whom I knew virtually none. They surfaced late-night in my bland suburban adolescent realm in the form of the new video for “New Big Prinz,” an immediate classic amidst their dizzyingly vast output. I remember it being, well, orange. Steve Hanley’s throbbing, pulverizing bass line heralded their trademark relentlessness. Over the piledriver rhythm, Craig Scanlon’s jagged, cascading guitar somehow meshed with Brix Smith’s incongruous […]

WORTH REPEATING: The Day Martin Luther King Had To Explain To His Daughter Yolanda That Little ‘Colored’ Girls Are Not Allowed To Go To Funtown

PLAYBOY: Dr. King, are your children old enough to be aware of the issues at stake in the civil rights movement, and of your role in it? MARTIN LUTHER KING: Yes, they are—especially my oldest child, Yolanda. Two years ago, I remember, I returned home after serving one of my terms in the Albany, Georgia, jail, and she asked me, “Daddy, why do you have to go to jail so much?” I told her that I was involved in a struggle to make conditions better for the colored people, and thus for all people. I explained that because things are […]

IN MEMORIAM: David Bowie Will Never Die

  EDITOR’S NOTE: This euology originally published in the wake of David Bowie’s death on January 10th 2016. We are re-posting it today on the occasion of his birthday and the kick-off of Philly Loves Bowie Week. BY JONATHAN VALANIA The year is 1980 and 14-year-old me drops the needle on Changesonebowie in my bedroom, with the door locked because this is serious business, while staring at the album cover, trying to figure out how all these startling and seemingly disconnected musics — space-age psych folk, white plastic soul, zooming Brechtian glam, bloozy garage-punk, coked-up funk, Teutonic trance-rock, proto-electronica — […]

Since His Inauguration, Trump Has Told 1,950 Lies

WASHINGTON POST: With just 18 days before President Trump completes his first year as president, he is now on track to exceed 2,000 false or misleading claims, according to our database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. As of Monday, the total stood at 1,950 claims in 347 days, or an average of 5.6 claims a day. (Our full interactive graphic can be found here.) As regular readers know, the president has a tendency to repeat himself — often. There are now more than 60 claims that he has repeated three or more times. The […]

THE KING OF COMEDY: Q&A With Judd Apatow

EDITOR’S NOTE: This week we will be re-posting choice Q&As from the past year. Today we present this reprise edition of this in-depth interview with Judd Apatow, which originally posted on February 17th, 2017. Enjoy. BY JONATHAN VALANIA By this point, everyone knows who Judd Apatow is, or at least everyone who’s had even a glancing interface with a cineplex marquee or has a non-delinquent cable account and a functioning funny bone. With writing, producing, directing or acting credits in nearly 40 films and 24 television shows, Mr. Apatow has become the Starbucks of comedy — dark-roasted, fairly-traded, consistently reliable, […]

IN ORWELL WE TRUST: Q&A With Pulitzer Prize-Winning National Security Reporter Tom Ricks

  EDITOR’S NOTE: This week we will be re-posting choice Q&As from the past year. We start with this still-timely interview with nat-sec reporter Tom Ricks, which originally posted on May 25th, 2017. Enjoy. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Under the darkening skies of the late 1930s, liberal democracy was on the ropes and fascism and totalitarianism was on the rise, reason and common sense were overwhelmed by racist entreaties, economic misery and nationalist fury, press freedoms were under attack and the facts had become a matter of opinion. Sound familiar? Two less than distinguished men rose to the occasion: a tarnished, […]

PARANOID ANDROID: Q&A W/ Gary Numan

  BY DAVID R. STAMPONE If you’ve been out of the loop on Gary Numan in recent years, you may not know that the highly influential (Nine Inch Nails to Afrikaa Bambaataa et al.) English new wave synth-rock star with the erstwhile icy android persona has become quite active again in the new millennium. Hugely popular through the very late ‘70s/ early ‘80s w #1 singles and albs, he’s in a very good place at age 59, having come to grips with issues like a decline in creative interest and his (eventually diagnosed) Asperger’s syndrome some time ago. (An engaging […]